


street's an empty stage

by grim_lupine



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Dreamsharing, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10949214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/pseuds/grim_lupine
Summary: Over their heads, in this little dream world Nicklas has built, the sun is blazing at it's peak, searing them where they sit. The light bathes Alex a molten gold. He couldn't look any other way in Nicklas’s head, of course.Nicklas is cracked open, exposed.





	street's an empty stage

**Author's Note:**

> i just have a lot of feelings, okay
> 
> title from "mirrorball". thanks to pageleaf for looking this over for me!

The water laps at Nicklas’s toes, milk-warm and teasing. He blinks, and it's beating his ankles; blinks, and it's rising around his knees; blinks, and he's in it waist-deep. 

There’s packed, grainy sand beneath his feet, but no land for as far as he can see, just endless water: shifting back and forth between a lurid blue-green and the thundering gray of a storm, seamless. It all makes sense to Nicklas somewhere deep within his placid, unconcerned mind.

Of course, it's that persistent calm within himself that at last makes Nicklas tip his head and think, _Ah. I'm dreaming, then._

Like stepping out into a winter’s wind, the realization rouses him with a cool slap to the face, leaving his ears ringing. He is dreaming, and aware, and there is someone in the water behind him.

Nicklas turns. Alex grins at him, half-submerged in the water, looking like some kind of bizarre, barrel-chested merman. For a moment, Nicklas simply thinks he has dreamed him up as well; it wouldn't be the first time Alex has invaded Nicklas’s sleep, as inescapable there as he is in the waking world. But there is something in the vivid gleam of Alex’s eyes, the sharp vitality of his smile, and a sense of foreboding starts to unfurl slowly in Nicklas’s stomach as — 

“You still dreaming like this, Nicky?” Alex says, looking around at the surrounding water, now a shrill scarlet, with amusement. “Guess I got a lot of swimming to look forward to.” 

— Nicklas thinks _Oh, hell_ , and closes his eyes. 

 

It's been years since their first and only spell of dream-sharing. If Nicklas had to guess what had brought it on then, he’d say it was the painful newness of them — fumbling around each other and struggling to make themselves understood, keenly aware of the weight of a team yoking itself to their shoulders. They spent two weeks treading a path through each other’s dreams before it ended as suddenly as it had begun. 

Nicklas was left feeling like he'd — if only briefly — pulled aside the curtain over a mind as raucous and wild as expected, with oceanic depths he couldn't fully plumb even if he had years to spend at it. 

He doesn't know what Alex took from it. He's never asked. 

“Seriously, why so much water all the time?” Alex says, sitting down with his legs stretched out before him. There’s a white sandy beach beneath them where there hadn't been one half a second before. “You drink too much before bed or something?” 

“Maybe I'm thinking about drowning you,” Nicklas says blandly, dropping down next to Alex. A puff of sand flings itself into Nicklas’s face. When he finishes coughing and dusting off his cheeks, he glares at Alex, who is hiding a smirk, badly. The sand around him has rearranged itself into a sleek hollow with raised armrests, a makeshift throne for a mad, blithe king. 

Of course this dream world, for all that it is raised in Nicklas’s sleeping mind, dances to Alex’s every whim and fancy like an eager-to-please puppy. He doesn't know why he'd expected anything different. 

Up close, Nicklas wonders how he could have imagined Alex to be a dream-construct for even a second. The times Nicklas have imagined him fade in pale imitation of the reality of him, bursting with color, so bright it nearly hurts to look at him. 

“You want to get rid of me that bad, you just wait,” Alex says, reaching out and digging his fingers into Nicklas’s side. “You going to wake up soon, only get me a few hours this time.” 

And that's right — Nicklas forgot about the hours between them this time around, Nicklas in Sweden and Alex still seeing doctors in D.C.

“You _are_ getting older, you know. You could go to bed when normal people do,” Nicklas says. He's intending to chirp Alex, only realizes how horribly revealing it is when the words leave his mouth.

Alex smiles — a slow, knowing curl of his mouth that catches in Nicklas’s chest. If his eyes were the surface of a lake, frozen over, Nicklas would fall through and drown. 

“Why, you want to see more of me?” Alex says, quiet and teasing. His voice is low and so warm, but Nicklas is warmer. He is burning up from the inside out; he thinks if he opens his mouth there will be nothing but flame, like a dragon of old. 

Over their heads, in this little dream world Nicklas has built, the sun is blazing at it's peak, searing them where they sit. The light bathes Alex a molten gold. He couldn't look any other way in Nicklas’s head, of course. 

Nicklas is cracked open, exposed. 

“You miss me, Nicky?” Alex says, barely a whisper. 

Nicklas opens his mouth to say — what, he doesn't know, before one of the birds circling above them in the brilliant sky chooses that moment to dive right toward them. Landing on the sand, it opens its mouth and lets out a rhythmic, brassy blaring, getting louder and louder until — 

— Nicklas blinks, and realizes he's tangled in his sheets, awake. His phone’s alarm shrieks on until he reaches out and swipes it off with fumbling fingers. 

The room is deafening in its emptiness. 

“Fuck,” Nicklas says quietly, and swallows down the taste of the _yes_ he almost let free. 

 

Nicklas spends the first half of his day training, letting the exertion wipe his mind blissfully blank. He makes himself lunch afterward and eats it standing up, staring out the window in silence. He gets six texts from his brother. He gets a link to some Buzzfeed quiz about Disney princesses from Burkie, and three follow up texts guessing which princess Nicklas is. 

He gets nothing from Alex all day, until night has fallen in a dark hush around him and he's sprawled out on his couch, watching TV. His phone chimes; when he checks it, it's a picture of Alex’s dogs, sleeping on their backs with their tongues hanging out, looking ridiculous. 

_like father like children_ Nicky texts back, and carries his smile with him to bed, satisfied. 

He doesn't need them to talk about it when they're awake; they never have in the past, like there's a veil blurring the line between the two worlds. As if to speak of it would burst the fragile bubble of intimacy building around them before they're ready for it. 

It's enough for Alex to reach out, and to reach out in turn: _yes, hello, I'm still here; I won't run off scared if you won't_. 

Nicklas falls asleep between one thought and the next. 

He's dreaming without paying much attention to it — jumping around on rooftops with weightless feet — until he falls down a stomach-lurching drop and finds himself landing in the middle of a city in shambles, dismally gray under the twilight sky. The buildings are crumbling like they've been clutched and squeezed in someone's fist. They're also overrun with zombies.

Alex stands in the middle of a courtyard, wearing black from head to toe, an axe in one hand. 

Nicklas snorts before he can help himself, then manages to hide the rest of his laugh in the crook of his arm, shoulders shaking. When he straightens up, he sees Alex grinning at him unrepentantly. 

“I was watching movie before bed,” Alex says, shrugging. “If you want, we go for nice boring swim instead.”

“No, no, this is your dream,” Nicklas says, coughing to clear the last of the laughter from his voice. “I'll follow you.” 

And he does. It's surprisingly therapeutic, swinging at the drooling, shuffling zombies like he's in a video game. He and Alex clear a whole building and then hit the road outside, trudging on. The landscape opens out ahead of them, an apocalyptic horizon that's surprisingly beautiful. 

“You'd think you'd want to get some rest while sleeping, at least,” Nicklas says, doing his best to purse his lips in feigned disapproval. It's no use: he can feel the pink burn in his cheeks, the helpless smile that keeps breaking through like the sun after a cloudburst. He probably looks like he's been dragged headfirst through a cyclone and liked it. 

“I'm not one who jump-kicked zombie like five minutes ago,” Alex points out. Nicklas ignores him. 

They turn into an alley that looks like a prime place to get murdered in, so Nicklas doesn't know why he isn't expecting it when a zombie drops down from the roof scant inches in front of his face. He freezes — it's a dream, but it _feels_ real — and it reaches out its grasping hands, and — 

The brick wall behind them lurches out and topples onto the zombie, burying it in a pile of rubble so tall all he can see is one foot that twitches, twitches, and stills. 

Nicklas blinks. He looks at Alex, whose mouth is parted in surprise, and he keeps looking as surprise turns to embarrassment before being hastily shuffled away. 

“You're welcome,” Alex says blithely, like he had meant to do that, like Nicklas can't see it all over his face: Alex’s mind won't let Nicklas get hurt, even in a dream, even without Alex knowing it. 

Nicklas says nothing, keeps looking at Alex. There is satisfaction rising warm and rich in his chest; he think it is probably shining out through his skin, his eyes, visible even in this half-light they have blanketing them. 

“Thank you,” he says at last, very sweetly.

Alex’s face is craggy with shadows, the sky darker now than it was a second ago, letting Alex hide; but Nicklas thinks he sees, for an instant, a wash of pink over the plane of a cheekbone. 

They climb through a window and settle down in an abandoned apartment, filled with rickety furniture and soft yellow lighting and an odd, newspapery smell. Alex emerges with a bottle of wine from the kitchen, looking hilariously thoughtful.

“You think we get drunk in dream?” Alex asks, wiggling the bottle in front of Nicklas’s face. 

“Studies inconclusive,” Nicklas says immediately. He'd fallen down a rabbit hole of reading after their spell of dream-sharing years back, just in case. No such thing as over-preparation in his book. 

They give it their best try, finishing off the bottle between them, sitting on the floor. Nicklas doesn't feel drunk, but he does feel a little soft around the edges, pleasantly hazy. 

Beside him, Alex bends his leg at the knee, flexing it. He straightens it back out and leans back against the wall, closing his eyes.

“Is nice to get a break from this knee, even if only a dream,” Alex says. He opens his eyes. 

“...What?” Alex says, brows snapping together. His posture slowly stiffens upright, in response to whatever it is he sees in Nicklas’s face. “What is it?” 

“Nothing,” Nicklas says tightly. He's feeling abruptly over-warm, a little sick. 

Alex laughs. It sounds like it's been dragged through his teeth, splintered along the way. “You best center, Nicky, but you terrible liar.” He leans into Nicklas’s space, the set of his mouth persistent, challenging. Nicklas’s head is pounding furiously. 

“Why you angry?” Alex asks. Nicklas reaches out for the bottle of wine to see if there's anything left, and only succeeds in upsetting it with clumsy hands. 

“I'm not angry,” Nicklas says sharply, inanely — he couldn't fool a stranger right now, let alone someone who knows him as well as Alex does. It's there in his voice; it's there in the white-knuckled clench of his fists. 

“You _are_ ,” Alex hisses, eyes flashing. His face is white, lined with something raw Nicklas is too slow, too muddled to grasp right now. The floor beneath them tremors faintly. “Why you not just say it so we can talk? I know, I get hurt, I let down team — ”

Everything grinds to a halt in Nicklas’s mind. “You think _that's_ why I'm angry?” he says, incredulous. “Are you an idiot?”

The tumultuous air between them crystallizes still — and then snaps. Nicklas can see the tension slowly drain from Alex’s face, his shoulders relaxing, the ground going still. When he meets Nicklas’s eyes again, the spark of humor is back. 

“Probably,” Alex says ruefully. “But you already tell me you angry now, can't take it back. So what's wrong?” 

Nicklas flushes. How does he explain this? He doesn't know how.

It's ridiculous, because it's nothing he isn't familiar with: you give everything to the game, every drop of blood, every last gasp while your legs still have strength. He's done it himself; they all have. 

But still, when he thinks of Alex lying crumpled on the ice, that endless moment where nothing was in Nicklas’s head but a white rush, he finds himself choking on a blind, directionless rage: that Alex was hurt, that he pushed through it unquestioningly, because that's what the world demands. That they question anyway whether he's done enough. 

Nicklas has no way to say any of that, except to put one hesitant hand on Alex’s knee and say, very seriously, “Alex — don't get hurt. I don't like it.”

Nicklas is the idiot king of understatement. If he swallowed his own tongue it might do him more good. 

Up close, Alex’s eyes are fathomless. Nicklas has a hard time pinpointing the color of them, but they always remind him of water: gray choppy seas in a storm, or like now, a warm lake that sweetly threatens to envelop him whole. 

“Okay, Nicky,” Alex says at last, staying still under Nicklas’s hand. He’s smiling, a small, private smile that makes Nicklas flush horribly and — finally — retreat. 

In the distance, Nicklas can hear the faint tremor of music looming closer. 

“Time to go,” Alex says, hooking his fingers into the pocket of Nicklas’s jacket.

“No more zombie movies before bed,” Nicklas says, after clearing his throat twice; and it's Alex’s laughter he takes with him as he drifts away from the warm little corner of Alex’s mind to the bed where he wakes up, the sound still ringing in his ears. 

 

Nicklas is preoccupied all day. Echoes of their conversation, the look on Alex’s face — it stays with him, turning Nicklas’s stomach when he remembers it. The thought of going another full day without reaching out feels suddenly unacceptable, so around mid-afternoon he picks up his phone and — 

— hesitates, conflicted. They don’t talk about these things. What does he say? What does he say to make sure Alex never gets that white drawn look on his face again, never doubts that Nicklas — that he — 

In the end, Nicklas just writes _idiot_ , and sends it. It doesn’t hurt to drive the message home. He thinks it might be the most reassuring thing he could send. 

Three minutes later he gets a kissing emoji in response, and grins down at his phone, amused and relieved. He suspects that that’s it: they’ve solved whatever needed to be solved. Back to their own heads they go.

When Nicklas falls asleep that night and ends up in the middle of a flat, frozen pond, and turns to see Alex standing at his side, he knows from the half-surprised, half-resigned look on Alex’s face that he had thought so too. 

“This better than the other water dreams, I guess,” Alex says, looking around at the deserted wintry scene, puffs of snow-laced air circling him and dusting his hair with frost. “Ice I can do.”

Nicklas looks down. There are skates on their feet now, a puck nudging the blade of Alex’s. When he looks back up, one of the trees overhanging the pond dangles two sticks toward him helpfully, swinging in the wind. 

Nicklas laughs aloud, and grabs the sticks, handing one over to Alex without looking. His laugh echoes a little eerily around them, but when he looks back over at Alex, he’s grinning a gap-toothed grin in response. 

“Let’s go!” Alex says; and they’re off, streaking down the surface of the ice for the joy of it, racing to the net that’s sprouted up at the other end of the pond. They spend what feels like hours stripping the puck from each other and taking increasingly wild shots at the net, feats of improbable physics that can only happen in their dreams, that feel _just_ out of reach when awake. The sky is a bright, cold blue; the snow-sparkling wind ruffles Nicklas’s hair, but he doesn’t feel the chill at all, only a rising, childlike sense of glee.

It’s _fun_. There are no stakes, no rules, just this: just the two of them and the ice, playing the game they’ve always loved. 

Alex’s feet slip out from under him and he goes sliding on his back on the ice; the laugh punches out of him to slice through the air, a keen ringing sound that makes Nicklas catch his breath. Spread-eagled on the ice, he looks exultant and wild, a god of mischief brought down to earth; he looks so _young_ , like the boy Nicklas had first known. 

Abruptly, Nicklas remembers a dream he had caught in Alex’s head years ago: a surface of ice, skates on their feet, but as far from this scene as possible. They stood at the bottom of an arena, rows of seats stretching up around them like a nightmarish amphitheater, inhuman and old. Ten-thousand eyes filled the stands, and they skated under their judgmental gaze, trembling. The scrape of their skates on the ice filled the air until it sounded like a constant whisper: _give up, turn back, you can’t do this. You will_ lose.

Nicklas suspects that dream has never quite left Alex; but at least there’s this. At least he dreams like this, too. 

Nicklas drifts over until he’s standing right above Alex, looking down at his grinning face. “You gonna help me up, Nicky?” Alex says innocently, reaching up one hand.

Nicklas reaches out to meet him, knowing full well what’s coming: Alex yanks him down until he goes sprawling on the ice half-beside him, half-above him, nearly nose-to-nose. Nicklas huffs out a breath and meets Alex’s eyes. The glint of satisfied laughter in them makes Nicklas go warm, and he starts to drop his gaze, and — stops.

He doesn’t want to look away. He’s so _tired_ of looking away. 

It’s not like he doesn’t know what this is. They both know it, have since the start; since the first spark of connection, of _knowing_ someone so well you couldn’t help but like them. It’s just always been easier to look the other way, to pretend they never saw it in the first place. Too dangerous, too frightening. Too big. 

Alex’s face changes, smile falling away slowly. He looks like he’s holding his breath, a fearful stillness keeping him in place, like he thinks he’s given himself away somehow. 

Nicklas thinks of that dream, skating with Alex under a choking miasma of fear, head bowed. In his mind, he will always be where he was there: standing at Alex’s back, by his side. The thought that Alex might see him as one of the ten-thousand judgmental eyes, if even for a moment, is intolerable. 

He could tell himself all the same things he did when he was younger: be cautious, think twice, wait. But he’s older now, and a little wiser, he hopes; and he thinks now that maybe the worst that could happen to them isn’t making the wrong choice. It’s never making a choice at all — waiting and waiting and waiting until you turn around one day and all you’ve been left with are the what-could-have-beens to torment you. 

“ _Alex_ ,” Nicklas says, just to hear what it sounds like out loud, with everything tumbling free in his voice. Then he ducks his head and kisses Alex, going up on one forearm to brace himself. 

Alex’s hands come up to clutch Nicklas’s shoulders immediately, fingers tightening nearly enough to bruise. His mouth opens hot against Nicklas’s. The prickle of his stubble makes Nicklas shiver, press closer.

Still: there's an odd hesitancy to Alex’s motions, like he's holding himself back. Nicklas pulls away to look down at him, frowning slightly. 

“What is it?” Nicklas asks.

Alex shrugs, bites the corner of his mouth. “We gonna talk about it when we're awake?” His tone is determinedly nonchalant, and transparent as window-glass.

“Of course we are,” Nicklas says sharply, appalled. Then he pauses and gathers himself, says intently, “I know we haven't, but — you know it's all real to me, don't you? Whether it happens here, or outside our heads. It's real.” 

This time, when Nicklas bends his head, Alex comes alive under his mouth.

Nicklas knows it's coming, from the shifting and bunching of Alex’s muscles under his hands: he lets himself be rolled smoothly onto his back, laughing low in his throat as Alex kisses his mouth hard, then the curve of his chin, then the soft hollow of his throat. 

This is what was missing before, what it's like to really kiss Alex: laughter and heat, trembling electricity. The push-pull they fall into without words. 

Over what could be minutes, hours, or days for all Nicklas can tell, the sun glows steadily brighter and brighter overhead, though oddly filtered and soft. It reminds Nicklas of morning light breaking through his bedroom curtains; and then he realizes that, of course, that’s exactly what it is. 

He breaks away from Alex slowly, tender-mouthed and shivering. His body feels light and a little distant.

Alex tucks a strand of hair behind Nicklas’s ear.

“Wake up, Nicky,” Alex says softly, satisfaction brimming in the vessel of him, spilling over into his voice. “Wake me up too.” 

“Yes,” Nicklas says. “Yes.” And he steals one more kiss in this hushed, breathless dream world before he feels himself fade away, hand still curled like he’s clutching Alex’s shirt in his fist. 

 

He's rolling before he's fully awake, reaching out with blind hands for his phone, nearly fumbling it to the ground. 

The line rings once, twice. In those few seconds, Nicklas’s stomach lurches toward his knees: for all his talk of real and not real, there's a part of him as well that won't believe this until it's in his grasp, here in the firm, unshakable waking world. 

Halfway through the third ring, it picks up:

“Nicky,” Alex says, in a voice sleep-rough and full, so full. It’s all he says; and it’s enough. It’s everything.

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe i wrote a whole fic about dreamsharing and no one had a sex dream


End file.
